Soon after Lyft foiled its paperwork to go public, the ride-hailing giant and Lyft’s competitor Uber jumped to the battlefield.
Uber too, following Lyft, filed its S1 with Security Exchange Commission to officially move towards the biggest stock market debuts!
Earlier, the report from Wall Street Journal had it clearly stated that Uber filed papers for the public offering. A few investment bankers told Uber that it has a worth around $120 billion in an I.P.O. Not to forget, this is going be one of the biggest offerings since the online retailer giant, Alibaba Group from China began trading on New York stock exchange. According to a venture capitalist, Mamoon Hamid,
“It is like the graduation. The adolescents have become adults. The longest bull run in history is now culminating with a whole slew of I.P.O.s. Uber is in the same ballpark as Facebook and Google.”
Renowned names such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have submitted their proposals for taking Uber publically. However, JP Morgan Chase was picked up by Lyft to carry out its I.P.O. Many of the private investors have valued Lyft around $15 million.
With all the IPO news coming into sight, we need to remember how Uber has been facing difficulties in a lot of sectors, financially. The company has been running in a loss of $1.07 billion in the last quarter of the year. Also, the company sold out many operations in countries where it seemed difficult and costly to keep up with the rivals. However, after selling a lot of operations in regions like Russia, Uber strategically jumped on to new ventures like UberEat and food delivery services along with bike and scooter rentals. These ventures seemed to be more profitable for the company.
The fact that Uber has been gaining the attention of a lot of venture capitalist can’t be ignored. Uber has delivered its customers in more than 60 cities. Uber clients trust Uber with convenience comfort and economical fare subsidies that result in perfect riding experience.
Investors trust in Uber has led the company to fight the rocky phase with a sheer glow. The company’s CEO told The New York Times in an interview:
“We’re not done by any means, but if you look at where we were one year ago, we were dealing with fundamental issues of governance, of board alignment, of these continuing battles amongst power-brokers on our board and whether or not we were going to have SoftBank with us or against us. Those were very important issues to deal with and to resolve, and I think we resolved them quite effectively in a positive way.”
It is expected that the Uber would get the approval for IPO around the first quarter of next year, maybe before Lyft gets it.
Stay tuned to know who won the war!
Areen Zahra
Fazeel Ashraf
